


Apollo Daphnephoros

by romans



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-23
Updated: 2012-04-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 04:25:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romans/pseuds/romans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She prays every night that he'll return to her and then lays awake until dawn terrified of the same thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apollo Daphnephoros

She has two names to go on. Castiel. Sam Winchester. She thinks of her husband, locked away in a little room with nothing but his own insanity, and wonders who he really is. They'd always assumed that the memories would come back, that "Emmanuel" was a temporary placeholder, (עִמָּנוּאֵל, Immanuel; _God Is With Us_ ), and that they'd go down that path together.

Now it's just her, alone in their house. Emmanuel, whoever he really is, isn't coming back any time soon. So Daphne opens her computer one night and types Sam Winchester's name into the search bar.

There's not much to go on, to start with, and after three hours of fruitless googling she goes to bed. She wonders if Emmanuel is really an angel, contemplates how deep her faith goes. Sleep is slow to come and she has no answers when she finally drifts off.

 

The next morning, Daphne calls in sick to work. Her stomach is churning, and her head hurts, but it's not from any illness. Her husband is a cipher, an empty vessel. The only thing she knows about him that's absolutely certain is that he can heal people. She wonders what else he can do. For the first time, she's a little afraid.

She brews a cup of tea, drags her laptop onto her bed, and looks up Castiel.

She finds the Angel of Thursday. And then, near the end of the search page she comes across a headline: _Campaign office tragedy; murder suspect evades authorities_.

It can't have anything to do with Emmanuel. She clicks on it anyways, morbidly fascinated. The article links her to another strange murder, a week before: a priest was killed by a man who claimed to be God. His name, witnesses said, was Castiel.

She stops breathing for a moment. And then, calmly, mechanically, she digs deeper.

The murder suspect had been identified by the police as James Novak, of Pontiac, Illinois, current whereabouts unknown. His family were assisting with the investigation, and he was to be considered highly dangerous.

There were pictures. Not of the carnage, or the bodies, but there were pictures of Emmanuel. A candid photo, of him smiling with an arm flung around someone's shoulder. His companion has been cropped out of the photo by the police. In a grainy still from a security camera, Emmanuel gives her a mocking grin.

Sam and Dean Winchester (Dean must've been the handsome brother, the man who seemed to care so much) are cropping up, too. As associates. As partners in crime.

Now Daphne knows two things for certain: Her husband was a murderer. A murderer who was locked in a secure psychiatric ward, who had lived with serial killers for three years. Her husband has the power to work miracles.

She slams her laptop shut and turns on every light in the house, the television, the radio. The doors are all locked. Emmanuel would never harm her, she knows that.

But Castiel. Jimmy Novak. She doesn't know them.

And Dean Winchester. She doesn't know him at all.

She double-checks the doors and then goes to her room. When she kneels down to pray, she finds herself bursting into hysterical tears instead.

This is too much. She never wanted this. She can't survive this.

She wants to run away. But where can you run to, when you're trying to escape an angel?

 

She finds James Novak listed in an online directory. His wife is named Amelia.

He's not even her husband, anymore.

He never was.

Amelia must know about all of this, must know about Dean Winchester and the murders and the ghost stories. Daphne watches the wind rustle the leaves of the tree across the street and thinks about the men who had attacked her before Dean arrived. She thinks about how the rope had cut into her ribs and bound her arms to her sides, how hard breathing had been. She hadn't been able to speak, to move, to do anything.

And now Dean might come back and do it all over again. She dials James Novak's number almost automatically, listens as it rings and rings. She wonders why it hasn't been disconnected. Perhaps Amelia hoped that her husband would come back to her one day.

Daphne understands that. She prays every night that he'll return to her and then lays awake until dawn terrified of the same thing.

When she does sleep, she has nightmares that he's standing over her, or that he's sitting in the corner of her room, impassive and inhuman and horrifying. In her dreams, he watches her sleep.

"Hello?" A woman has answered the phone.

"Hello," Daphne says, and suddenly she has no idea what to say. How could she start this conversation? _I married your husband and then Dean Winchester came and now he's not the man I married anymore. I think he may not be human._

_Do you have nightmares about Castiel or about James?_

_What's so special about Dean?_

"Can I help you?" Amelia sounds tired. A child says something in the background.

"Um," Daphne says. "I- my name is Daphne, and I think I married your husband."

There's a long silence on the other end of the phone.

" _Jimmy?_ " Amelia says, eventually. She sounds stunned, and hopeful. "No," she continues, almost to herself. "Castiel."

Her sigh crackles down the line.

"Jimmy is dead," Amelia says, softly but with finality, "and Castiel will never be yours."

"What is Castiel?" Daphne asks.

"You wouldn't believe me," Amelia replies, "and I can't talk about this. Look up demonology, learn to draw demon's traps, salt your doorways and memorize the Lord's Prayer. And please don't call me again."

When she hangs up, Daphne knows that the number will be disconnected the next time she dials it.

 

So she goes through the cupboards, through the dressers and drawers, and collects Emmanuel's things, Emmanuel's tea and his whiskey and his books and his sweaters, and she throws them into the garbage. The books she stashes in the attic. They might come in handy, someday.

She salts her doors and windows, and puts on her coat, and goes to visit the thing that was once her husband.

Daphne's visited him once or twice before, when she still thought that he might be human, or that he might still be her husband. She still loves him, though, so she'll see him when she can.

The nurse at the front desk looks surprised to see her.

"Guess you missed the memo," he says. She looks at him in consternation.

"Is Emmanuel okay?" she asks.

"He's gone," the nurse says, and he seems strangely pleased at the thought. He pops his gum at her.

" _Where?_ " she asks. "Why wasn't I notified?"

"Oh, honey," the nurse says, "he wasn't your legal husband, was he? Come on. We _both_ know he had things to do. Man crawls out of a river like that- heals the ill, doesn't _eat_ , and you really think he's going to stick around?"

He makes a moue of amusement, and flicks a gum wrapper across his desk.

"I-" Daphne stares at him. He had read the case file, and now he was playing some cruel prank-

"Daphne-" he said, and she couldn't find it in her to object at the impertinence - "trust me. You're in a _much_ better place now. None of those jerks will ever bother you again. I promise."

She stares at the short little man, who sits behind the receptionist's desk like a king on his throne, and wonders why she isn't more worried.

"There's nothing to be done," the man says. "Gum?"

She ignores the proffered stick and turns to go back to her car. He's gone. Emmanuel is gone. Castiel is gone. Just like Jimmy Novak, probably, is gone.

Amelia has moved on. Daphne begins to think that maybe she can do the same thing.

"Hey," the nurse calls, as she walks down the hall. She stops and turns to look at him. He looks very old, and very kind, somehow. Like Emmanuel had. "Take care of yourself," he says.

She can do that.

She can plant her own roots. She can grow.

Daphne has escaped.


End file.
